Europe & Central Asia

2011

After the
din of the day's student protests died down on Fleet
Street, a gathering of a quieter, more somber sort took place. St. Bride's Church, London's so-called church of the press, held its annual
service this Wednesday to commemorate journalists, photographers, cameramen,
and support staff that died in the pursuit of journalism. This year's service
was called "The Price of Freedom."

Tags:

New York, November 7, 2011--The Committee to Protect
Journalists condemns the conviction and sentence on defamation charges of
Valery Surganov, a reporter with the independent news website Guljan,
and calls for his full acquittal on appeal.

Tags:

Russia's Investigative Committee has named the
main suspects in the October 7, 2006,
murder of Anna Politkovskaya. But the news did not cause a stir. Russian
journalists reacted to it rather languidly; for instance, Novaya Gazeta, where
Politkovskaya worked, did not make any notable comments.

This is not because Politkovskaya's murder--now
five years old--has been forgotten in Russia. The tepid interest is mostly due
to the fact that there are no new names among the suspects.

Tags:

New York, November 2, 2011--The Committee to Protect
Journalists is alarmed by today's firebomb attack
on the French satirical magazine Charlie
Hebdo and the disabling of its website by unknown hackers. The attacks appear
to be in retaliation for the paper's spoof edition, "guest edited" by the Prophet Muhammad.

Tags:

New York, November 1, 2011--The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by the prosecution and imprisonment of Avaz Zeynally, editor-in-chief of the independent daily Khural, and calls on Azerbaijani authorities to release him immediately.

Tags:

Prosecutors
say every lead has been pursued, every witness questioned in the slayings of
editors Valery Ivanov and Aleksei Sidorov. But no one has ever been convicted,
and no one can explain what investigators did with the most compelling lead. A CPJ special report by Nina Ognianova

Tags:

New York, October
26, 2011--Authorities in the western Mangystau region of Kazakhstan must
thoroughly investigate a brutal attack today against two journalists for the
Internet-based opposition broadcaster Stan TV, the Committee to Protect Journalists said.

Tags:

Internationally renowned for her work,
respected for her courage and still mourned by thousands around the world five
years after her murder, Anna Politkovsakya has become an iconic symbol in the
global human rights struggle. But Sunday night, family, friends, colleagues and
others came together to share a more personal picture.

Tags:

The
European Union accession process has been hailed as the best tool in the
arsenal of democracy promotion. By adhering to the acquis communautaire, the EU's total body of legislation, and to the
Copenhagen
criteria that define the democratic nature of the EU, candidate countries are
supposed to perfect their political transition before joining "the club of
European democracies."

Tags:

New
York, October 14, 2011--The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns Thursday's
attack on Sasho Dikov, a Bulgarian journalist with private national television
channel Kanal 3, and calls on investigators to apprehend and prosecute
the perpetrators.